Editor’s note: On Tuesday we will be publishing a point-counterpoint by two parents on opposite sides of the Douglas County “Option Certificates” (or vouchers) proposal. The piece below was submitted to Education News Colorado by Justin D. Williams, a member of the Douglas County Board of Education.
Answers to the eight common opposition comments to Douglas County Scholarships:
1) Issue: You can’t use taxpayer dollars for private schools.
Response: It’s being done in 17 states currently at the K-12 level. The courts have ruled that the money goes to the families and the families decide where to send their child. It would be illegal to require a student to attend a private school. Also, our taxpayer dollars are currently going to BYU, Notre Dame, Gonzaga and most other accredited, religious-based universities via Pell Grants and the GI Bill. Those are tax dollars going to educate a student at a religious-based school. Also, we use taxpayer dollars at religious hospitals. We do this every day on many different levels.
2) Issue: Our school district has cut $100 million out of its budget over the last four years. We have to pay to have our kids ride the bus. We can’t take money out of our budget and give to rich, private-school kids.
Douglas County school board member Justin Williams listens during a break at a recent community meeting on choice.
Response: First of all, all private-school kids are not rich. And our proposed program is going to keep 75 percent of the money from the state ($6,100) and give it to the family for their choosing. The district keeps 25 percent. At 500 kids in the program, we make $400,000. That’s $400,000 that we don’t have now. This is NET NEW money. It will reduce cutbacks.
3) Issue: The BOE is spending too much time on this and not focusing on an election.
Response: We have to form a product if we are going to go out for an election. We spend most of our time on the “meat and potatoes” of education.
4) Issue: This is just rich, white Republicans trying to fund their religious schools.
Response: No, these are taxpayers who have a right to send their kids, and their tax allocation, to the school of their choice. It’s fair. Some are Republicans, some are white, some are neither. It’s not about race or being on one side or the other. It’s about being fair.
5) Issue: What happens if 500 kids all leave from one school? (As hypothetical as this is, many demand an answer to this question)
Response: It is unlikely that they would all leave from one school. But if they did, we would really examine what’s going wrong at that school. But we would use some of the PROFIT from this program to provide subsidies to those schools that lose too many kids.
6) Issue: By counting new students, you are making the pie smaller at the capital, thus taking money out of the educational fund.
Response: We are growing by over 1,300 students per year. This program will only have 500 students for the fall. We are still growing and receiving a net-new amount of students. In addition to that, Douglas County is a net-payer into the state. Other counties/school districts are net-receivers from the system. I’m okay with school districts like DPS getting more money. But how much is too much? We have reached that point. We finally had the money to put in a WAN this year. That’s about eight years later than it should have been.
7) Issue: 93 percent of our families are happy. That’s a great percentage. Why are we focusing all of our time on this small percentage?
Response: I have spent 100 percent of my time on the “core” students up until now. If you add up all of the time I have spent on this issue, it won’t add up to 7 percent of my time. And isn’t it about time we address these families/students who want something different? We can speculate why families want a different option. But you can’t deny that there is a demand for something different. We are just trying to meet that demand.
8) Issue: What happens if it fails? Where’s the data that shows that it will work? We need to see hard data to see that it will work. We also demand that the district take a poll to see if this is what they want.
Response: We don’t have data that will show it will work. We also don’t have data that show it won’t. How could we get data for this? This country (and every company) has been started with a risk. This has a risk, but it is a mitigated one. And we are not going to poll. We just had an election a while ago and the county voted in favor of three new board members that were very clear on their intentions.
Most other objections are variations of these eight. Just one other thing: Please don’t think that I am anti-teacher. It is a poor conclusion. I don’t believe you will feel that way after we get this completed.
Popularity: 34% [?]
Re Issue #6: My understanding is that to receive a scholarship, the student will have to be enrolled in a DCSD school for at least one year. So they aren’t “new students” being funded. One has to ask, though: Isn’t every current private & homeschool student in CO a potential funding liability to the state & school districts?
Mr. Williams is wrong about the estimated $6100 in per pupil revenue being “net new money” to DCSD. Only part of that amount — $3721 to be exact — would be ‘new money’; the balance is money DCSD would receive anyway. And because the District would only receive $3721 in ‘net new money’ per voucher pupil, and would be paying out $4575 per voucher pupil, each and every voucher pupil will cause an out-of-pocket loss to the district of $854.
Here’s a more detailed explanation of how the process would really work:
In describing the proposed option certificate program, the DCSD Board and staff have made three incorrect claims about how the “option certificates” will be paid for and the effect they will have on the DCSD budget for 2011-12. All of these claims relate to the estimated $6100 in per pupil revenue (“PPR”) which is supposedly ‘additional revenue’ to the district for each OCP student and which will supposedly be used to pay for the option certificates. Those incorrect claims, and their corrections, are:
1. Incorrect claim: PPR is entirely funded by the state.
Correct statement: Only 61% of PPR received by DCSD for each student ‘counted’ as a DCSD student is funded by the state; the other 39% comes out of Douglas County property taxes and specific ownership taxes.
2. Incorrect claim: The $6100 PPR for each OCP student would be all ‘additional revenue’ to DCSD – that is, money which would not be received by DCSD if that student were not enrolled in a DCSD school.
Correct statement: Only the 61% state-funded portion of PPR — or $3721 of the $6100 per pupil revenue – would be ‘additional revenue’ to DCSD. The District-funded portion of PPR will not be ‘additional revenue’ to the District because the District-funded portion comes from Douglas County property taxes and specific ownership taxes; DCSD will receive the entire amount of those local taxes regardless of how many students attend DCSD schools or OCP schools next year.
3. Incorrect claim: DCSD will ‘net’ $1525, or 25% of the estimated $6100 PPR, for every OCP student.
Correct statement: DCSD will lose $854 for every OCP student. The loss of $854 is the difference between the $3721 that DCSD will receive in ‘additional revenue’ from the state for that student and the $4575 that DCSD will pay in an ‘option certificate’ for that student.
Here are the explanations of each of these points:
The estimated $6100 PPR is funded 61% by the state and 39% by Douglas County property taxes and specific ownership taxes.
According to Bonnie Betz, CFO of the Douglas County School District, 61% of the estimated $6100 PPR is ‘state share,’ which is funded by the state, and 39% is ‘District share,’ which is funded by Douglas County property taxes and specific ownership taxes. In dollar amounts, this means that $3721 of the $6100 PPR will come from the state coffers and $2379 will come from Douglas County’s own property taxes and specific ownership taxes.
Only the state-funded portion of PPR — or $3721 of the $6100 per pupil revenue — will be ‘additional revenue’ to DCSD for each OCP student. The District-funded portion of PPR is not ‘additional revenue’ to DCSD because the District portion will be received and spent by DCSD regardless of how many students are counted as DCSD students.
This point turns on the very different ways in which the ‘state share’ and the ‘district share’ of PPR work.
The state share of PPR is calculated by dividing up the state funding ‘pie’ among all the school districts of Colorado. Each school district tells the state how many students will be enrolled in its schools; the state adds up the total number of students reported by all of the school districts, and divides the pie up by the total number of students – this yields the state portion of PPR; the state then gives each school district an amount of money equal to that district’s number of enrolled students multiplied times state PPR. This means that, for each additional student who enrolls in its schools, DCSD will receive another piece of the state pie; and for each student who leaves the DCSD public schools, DCSD will lose a piece of the state pie. In dollar amounts (using the estimated total $6100 PPR figure), this means that DCSD will lose an estimated $3721 in state funding for each student who chooses to leave its public schools next year, and will gain an estimated $3721 for each new student who chooses to enroll in its public schools next year.
The district share works very differently, however. DCSD does not receive any more district share for every new student who enrolls in its schools; and it does not receive any less district share for every student who leaves. That is because the district share each year is a single, fixed pot of money for each district; that pot of money consists of the property taxes assessed and the specific ownership fees collected in that district for that year. The DCSD district share is thus all of the property taxes and specific ownership taxes collected in Douglas County each year. Because Douglas County’s district share consists of this fixed pot of local tax money, Douglas County does not lose any district share when a student leaves the District public schools, nor does the District receive any additional district share when a new student comes into the district. The ‘pie’ of the district share is the same size, regardless of how many students are enrolled in DCSD schools. To calculate the district share of PPR, this single pot of money is divided by the number of students who enroll in the district. If more students are enrolled, the pie is divided into smaller pieces; if fewer students are enrolled, that same district share pie is divided into larger pieces.
This means that, under the present system, when a student leaves DCSD to enroll at a private school, DCSD does not lose the district share of the PPR previously attributable to that student; to the contrary, DCSD keeps the district share of PPR and uses it for the education of the other students remaining in Douglas County public schools. So, using the District’s estimated figure of $6100 in combined state and district funded PPR, when a student leaves DCSD public schools and chooses to enroll in a private school, DCSD does not lose the $2379 which is the district share of the PPR attributable to that student; to the contrary, DCSD keeps that money and applies it to the education of the remaining DCSD students.
To summarize: under the present funding system, when a student chooses to leave DCSD public schools and goes to a private school, the only funding that DCSD loses is the state-funded portion of PPR, or $3721. Similarly, when a new student enrolls in a DCSD public school, the only additional revenue that DCSD receives for that student is the state-funded portion of PPR, or $3721.
DCSD will lose $854 for every OCP student – the difference between the $3721 that DCSD will receive in ‘additional revenue’ from the state for that student and the $4575 that DCSD will pay in an ‘option certificate’ for that student.
The only ‘additional revenue’ that DCSD gains or loses when a student enters or leaves the District public schools is the state share of PPR, or $3721 per student. But under the OCP, when a student leaves a DCSD public school, the District will be paying a private school $4575 for that student. This means that, for each OCP student, DCSD will take in additional state revenue of $3721 but will pay out $4575 to a private school – which means that DCSD will lose $854 for each OCP student.
The 25% of PPR that DCSD has been billing as a ‘holdback’ for the costs of administering the OCP program is not a ‘holdback’ at all, because it is not funded out of new money coming into the District. It is funded out of the District’s share, money that already belongs to DCSD; it is money that, without the OCP, would stay in the DCSD public schools and would be used to fund other programs in the District
The OCP will be a money-losing program for DSCD no matter how many students take advantage of it; in fact, the more students in the OCP, the more money DCSD will lose.
DCSD will have to pay $854 out of its own pocket for every student who takes advantage of OCP: DCSD will thus lose $854 for every OCP student. If 100 students take advantage of OCP, DCSD will lose $85,400 out of pocket. If 250 students receive option certificates, DCSD will lose $213,500 out of pocket. If 500 students receive option certificates, DCSD will lose $427,000 out of pocket. And these figures do not even take the administrative costs of OCP into account.
So if some taxpayers don’t want their tax dollars going to funding programs they disagree with (like abortions) and want to de-fund those programs for that reason, what do I get back in Colorado tax dollars if funding religious schools is against my beliefs?
It is my understanding that district funding from the state is based on the number of pupils in attendance at DISTRICT PUBLIC SCHOOLS on October 1st of each year. So, is it not the case then that students who receive vouchers would not count toward the district enrollment numbers, and thus, would not bring in state funding?
The district cannot simply pass the state funds along to the student if the district is not receiving state money for those students.
Lisa, can you tell me more about what federally- or state-funded programs your religion disagrees with? There is NO federal or state funding for abortions, nor are there any plans to do so.
Justin, to your point
1) Issue: You can’t use taxpayer dollars for private schools.
Response: It’s being done in 17 states currently at the K-12 level. The courts have ruled that the money goes to the families and the families decide where to send their child.
Rather, it is being done today only in FAILING school districts. The Supreme Court has very narrowly ruled in support of vouchers in failing school districts. How do you think they’ll rule once the Douglas Couny case ends up in front of them. Speaking of which, how much is defense of this case going to cost the county? Who’s going to pay for that? Or are you going to include that cost in the justification for going out for a mill levy increase?
Speaking of FAILING, Douglas County income taxes and sales taxes (spent all over this state) are funding FAILURE in Denver Public Schools who also draw 2/3rds of their per pupil revenue from the State of Colorado. They are slowly gobbling up more of the pie and this year their poor failing school district gets $4000 more per head than our rich and successful district. At this rate of redistribution it won’t be long before we are a case study in how much fiscal bleeding it takes to ruin success.
Maybe it is time to raise taxes temporarily to cover the economic downturn shortfall and then have them go down when the economy revives. Yes, I understand some are skeptical of tax increases going down but really, school funding should be as free of volatility as possible.
What Anne Kleinkopf says.
And here is no “profit” in publicly funded school districts,. There is just more tax revenue or less.
In this case, the DCSD BOE is arguing for more. And while I support equalization in concept, the reality is a a little hard to stomach when my tax money is going to subsidize wealthier households than mine, especially at a time when my school district is talking about budget cuts. You want to fund vouchers in Douglas County ? Do it with the local contribution, not the state contribution.
And BTW – DCSD schools are great. Why the desperation for publicly subsidized “choice”? Is this really about breaking the teachers union in DCSD?